Throughout the coastal states of India - West Bengal, Orissa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Maharashtra - coastal communities celebrated 15th August differently from the official India with its empty rhetoric and the radical India with its negativity of Black Flag demonstrations against the failures of the last 50 years. Under the leadership of National Action Committee Against Coastal Industrial Aquaculture (NACACIA), coastal communities marched to shrimp farms which were banned by the historic order by the Supreme Court on 11th December 1996 but have continued to operate in total contempt of the court orders. They proudly carried the Indian tri-colour flag and sang the National Song "Vande Mataram". From the coast of India a new meaning is being given to freedom both for the people and the country. For the victims of the aquaculture industry, Independence Day was a day for celebrating and asserting their sovereignty over their natural resources and their freedom to engage in their livelihoods. It was a day for re-committing themselves to continue their struggle to free the coast of the destructive aquaculture industry. It was a day for condemning the attempts by the government, politicians and the industrialists to subvert the Supreme Court judgement which has defended their rights and their coast.
Freedom as the Right to Life.
Our national song begins with the words, Vande MataramSujalam, Suphalam referring to abundance water and the abundance fruits that this rich land has gifted her people. In the coastal areas today there is no drinking water, peasants cannot get the fruits of the earth, and fishworkers cannot get the fruits of the sea because of the ecological havoc caused by the shrimp industry. 1 ha. of an industrial shrimp farm requires 120,000 cubic metres of sea water annually. This 12 metres of saline water over and above the water in coastal ecosystems creates serious problems of ground water salinisation. Ground water salinisation is creating a major drinking water famine creating tremendous difficulties for women of coastal regions. Women are walking for 10 miles to collect water of paying Rs.5/- for a pot of water. Since people’s livelihoods are being destroyed as a result of the destruction of coastal ecosystems, this additional burden is becoming economically unsustainable and families are migrating out of coastal villages. The seepage from the aqua farms creates salinisation and water logging of neighbouring agricultural farms. Salinisation of land creates a forced displacement of peasants and farmers from coastal agriculture. Some of the coastal regions are the most fertile bread baskets of the country. Nellore is named after "Nellu" which means rice in Telugu. This rice bowl is now totally destroyed through the impact of shrimp farms. The Cauvery Delta is another fertile area in which agriculture land is being converted into shrimp farms. The destruction of the rice bowls in coastal districts will contribute to major food insecurity as well as to massive unemployment generating, economic insecurity and social conflict. Factory farming of shrimp requires 4-6 tons per hectare of artificial feed. Only 16.7% of this feed is converted into shrimp biomass. The rest is converted into pollution, which deteriorates water quality inside the pond and in the ecosystem. It is this build up of pollution that is responsible for collapse of shrimp production in a short period and for the destruction of the productivity of estuarine and coastal waters. Industrial shrimp (prawn) farming is by its very nature non-sustainable. Intensive farming collapses in 5 years, semi-intensive farming collapses in 15 years and extensive farming collapses in 25 years. On the other hand traditional polyculture systems which work with nature’s cycles are perennial. Marine fisheries is destroyed in three ways by industrial shrimp farms: a) Wild fry is the major source of seed in shrimp farms. For every single fry of commercially desirable P. Monodon caught, more than 1000 other marine species are wasted as "fry by catch" leading to species loss and extinction. b) Fish caught at sea is a major source of shrimp feed. Each ton of industrial shrimp requires 10 times its weight in marine fish for conversion to feed. c) The pollution from shrimp farms also kills fish life and destroys marine resources. The argument used to justify the large scale destruction by the shrimp industry is the dollar earning that it brings to the shrimp industry even though it is made to appear that the private profits of the industry are an increase in national wealth. However, behind every dollar of earnings by the shrimp industry, there is 200 dollar worth of damage of local ecology and local economy if the ecological footprint of industrially produced shrimp is taken into account. The ecological footprint of a productive system is the productive ecosystem required to supply inputs to the production and to assimilate waste outputs from the production cycle. Entry 1 M2 of an industrial shrimp farm can require upto 200 M2 of marine and coastal ecosystems for input supply of shrimp seed and water and for sinks for waste and pollution. The destruction of coastal ecosystems leads to the destruction of coastal livelihoods. It is in recognition of this fact that the Supreme Court ordered closure of the shrimp factories within the coastal zone in order to protect the fundamental right to life that is guaranteed under the Constitution. It is this freedom as the right to life of the people which is being denied by the shrimp industry’s right to profit and which was being defended by the coastal communities in their celebration of theirs and India's freedom.
Freedom from Corruption
The shrimp industry is a breeding ground for ecological as well as political pollution which is known as corruption. While Multinational Corporations are the driving force in the shrimp feed industry and in the shrimp trade, our politicians and bureaucrats are also involved. The shrimp scam -- the involvy Bill (AAB) was rushed through Rajya Sabha. Through the AAB, the politicians are using the structures of democratic India meant to protect the people as instruments for their own power and accumulation and as an assault on the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the coastal people. Chief Ministers of every coastal state have interests in it. MPs, MLAs, bureaucrats are involved. The Finance Minister himself is supposed to be involved in the shrimp industry. Meghna farm in Shrikali in Tamil Nadu is reported to be owned by his brother-in-law. It is also reported that the Finance Minister himself has a shrimp farm in Ramnathpuram to establish which he cut down 5,000 coconut trees. The Prime Minister had stated in his Quit India celebration speech, that those who hold high offices and are corrupt are anti-national and traitors. In his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, he stated,
Anyone with any proof of corruption against any of my cabinet member can come to me and action will be taken without reservation.
During the Golden Jubilee year of India’s Independence we would like the Prime Minister to establish his commitment to wipe out corruption by taking action against the "traitors" involved in the shrimp scam. We would like the Prime Minister to not participate in the nurturing and protection of corruption by letting his cabinet undermine the Supreme Court judgement by bringing the AAB to Lok Sabha. Corruption is not just a matter of bribes. It is the institutionalised loot of the resources of the poor by those in power. Let the Prime Minister begin the cleaning up of corruption in his government by investigating the shrimp scam and by implementing the Supreme Court judgement. Attempts of subversion of the Supreme Court order through the AAB and the review petitions are a subversion of our justice system and our democratic fabric. Freedom is the defense of our democratic structures. The people are defending these structures while those in power are attempting to destroy them. Freedom from fear of Mafia rule Since the aqua industry has been established by violating every law of the land and by trampling on the rights of local communities, it continues to operate only through the rule of terror and violence. While each farm creates only employment for 2 people per hectare in the productive activity, there is a major "employment generation" through the need for private securities and private armies to defend the the shrimp factories from the people whose water, land and biodiversity is being destroyed and who are rising in revolt. An attempt is being made to contain the local agitations through money power and muscle power. Inspite of threats from the shrimp mafia, coastal people took out their freedom marches on 15th August even in the hot land of the mafia rule. People are showing that they are fearless because they are engaged in a just struggle to defend their lives. Fifty years after independence the challenge is to protect the freedoms we gained half a century ago, and to expand and deepen the meaning of freedom beyond our fifty years legacy so that it becomes a reality for the eighty per cent of India which has been marginalised by the five development decades and which is being rendered dispensable by the new economic policies of trade liberalisation and globalisation. The shrimp industry is a child of these "reforms" which are based on turning the "licence-permit raj" into the "licence to loot and the permit to plunder raj". Our Finance Minister, Shri Chidambaram is said to have said,
So, to those of you who wish to come to India, I say, come and stay there for a long time... the last time you came to India to take a look, you stayed 200 years. So, this time if you come, you must be prepared to stay for another 200 years. That is where the largest rewards are...
While the Finance Minister in whose hands the country has trusted its economic planning is inviting invaders to loot and recolonise us, he is also personally looting the resources of the poor coastal communities while maintaining the image of "Mr. Clean". Today, India seeks her freedom not just from the foreign powers who are attempting once again to colonise her. She seeks freedom from the political class which is dismembering her ecologically and socially. And this new freedom struggle for a free India is appropriately beginning in her social and environmental margins -- from the coasts, led by women, the traditional fishworkers and the landless or small peasants. The rebirth of a free India is taking place amidst the brutalisation and debasement of murders, abductions, caste and communal wars, political corruption and criminalisation of politics and the destruction of the natural and economic wealth of the people. In the margins, a new India is getting born-- an India built on the principles of sustainability and justice, of peace and harmony of democracy and diversity. The freedom from the margins, the freedom of the marginalised, will be India’s real search for freedom. This second freedom struggle has just begun.
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